I suspect modern terminals just evolved underneath you and you didn't notice since you were looking for a revolution. Most of what you want, you can have. I actually like eshell because I can "cat someImage.png" and it will literally inline the image for me on the terminal.[1] I don't think this is limited to eshell, either. I just don't know how to do it in other terminals.
To be clear, I think it is enticing to imagine a perfect solution. I just don't think it is fair to ignore all of the work that has happened. Nor do I think it is realistic that something will be able to get past the ridiculous cost of entry at this point. There is a reason eshell isn't a complete shell replacement.
To be direct to your points of things we need, though. I think you'd be surprised at just how well eshell does all of them. The only real limit to how well it works is that piping a lot of commands together is limited due to everything going through a buffer. For those cases, "shell" and then doing whatever I was wanting to do, works like a champ. And if I am really wanting to do some fancy stuff, an org buffer is better anyway.
> I actually like eshell because I can "cat someImage.png" and it will literally inline the image for me on the terminal.[1] I don't think this is limited to eshell, either. I just don't know how to do it in other terminals.
To be clear, I think it is enticing to imagine a perfect solution. I just don't think it is fair to ignore all of the work that has happened. Nor do I think it is realistic that something will be able to get past the ridiculous cost of entry at this point. There is a reason eshell isn't a complete shell replacement.
To be direct to your points of things we need, though. I think you'd be surprised at just how well eshell does all of them. The only real limit to how well it works is that piping a lot of commands together is limited due to everything going through a buffer. For those cases, "shell" and then doing whatever I was wanting to do, works like a champ. And if I am really wanting to do some fancy stuff, an org buffer is better anyway.
[1] https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/3432/display-image...